Jacquard, Joseph Maria

Submitted by Mike Miller

There is a name which stands pre-eminently forward among the, four inventors of the modern loom. It is as dear to the Cotton Exchange of New Orleans as that of Bore' is to the Sugar Exchange. It is that of Joseph Maria Jacquard. Born at Lyons, France, in 1752, he completed in 1801 that invention which, applied to the loom, controlled every warp thread, by means of which a throw of the shuttle would raise any number or group of the threads. This invention rendered the weaving of the most complicated patterns possible, and it stands to-day holding that place in manufacture which it did in 1801, never to be excelled. The flying shuttle and picker-staff of John Kay (1735), may be said to have given place to the positive-motion shuttle of James Lyall, but Jacquards' controller, which gave such possibilities to the loom, still holds its place without fear of an usurper. The inventor died at New Orleans in 1834, honored by the city and the world of weavers.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 483. Published by the Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.